Just Friends
by I heart scrawny Jewish boys
Summary: Roger's thoughts on his roommate. Short and bittersweet. I DO seem to be a fan of that, don't I? Set PostRENT. M for language sorry, no sex!, slashy.


One-shot time! I don't know why this happened; y'all know I don't usually write Roger. I leave that to Chris (GayApparel for those of you who don't know). After all, he's her baby.

Anyway. Just a Roger perspective on Mark, because dammit, there should be one in my canon. I promise, the next chapter of Days of Inspiration will be up soon!

Disclaimer: If I owned such pretty boys, they wouldn't be angsting. There are too many clothes involved. Especially if a Naked Adam Pascal/Joshua Kobak/Cary Shields/Other Hot Roger is involved.

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Roger POV

He's always told me I'm an idiot, and that I don't know what I want in life. Bull fucking shit. If anyone's the poster child for not knowing what he wants, it's him. I'm pretty simple, when all's told. Write my song, find love, hopefully live another year or two. That's all I'm looking for at this point. I don't know why everyone thinks I'm so complicated.

But him...I know what he wants better than he ever has. He's so focused on everyone except him, focused literally through his camera, he can't see himself at all. I take his camera sometimes and turn it on him; he always bitches at me when I do that. He thinks I do it to annoy him, or to get back at him for always filming him, but that's not it. I know for a fact that's the only time he'll ever actually look at himself, if it's on film. I always wonder if he watches those parts when he's screening, or if he skips them as relentlessly as the parts that are overexposed.

He doesn't know himself at all. Ask him his favorite color, and he'll shrug. His favorite food? He'll shrug. Same for his favorite band, but he'll say mine to make me happy. That's him, always trying to make people happy. He's not shrugging because he doesn't want to say, it's because he doesn't fucking know. I held him down one time until he told me his favorite color, and he finally yelled that he didn't know. It was the angriest I've ever seen him. He hates talking about himself that much.

That's why his relationships are all jokes. Come on...Maureen? That was some weird combination of loneliness and goddess-worship. He stayed her because he needed her, and she stayed with him because he was (let's face it) pretty convenient. He could work her equiptment, he was cute, and he'd do whatever she said. Being Maureen, she couldn't pass that up. Worked for both of them for a while, but it sure as fuck wasn't love, on either end.

He doesn't date much, either. He's had maybe three or four girlfriends that I can remember, and I've known him more than ten years. And they've all been Wonder Women, Amazon Queens. In short, butcher than he is. He likes women he knows he can't handle, and they wind up leaving him. Big fucking surprise, every time.

He's got it all backwards, that boy, and always has. He wears his biggest 'secrets' on his face for everyone to see, but hides the little things, the stupid things. He conceals to his deathbed things that should be obvious, like snippets of his day to day life, or the names of his sister's kids, but at a moment's notice he'll tell you the most humiliating experiences of all time, something normal people bury from themselves. When Maureen left him for a woman, he told everyone he could find, including his mother. Who does that? Honestly, why give that woman any more ammunition than she already has?

He thinks if everyone knows these things, they'll make fun of him in a friendly way. No matter what he says, he needs acceptance like no one else I've ever known. He's okay with being the butt of the joke, as long as he's in the joke. But lately, he's been closing himself off even more than usual. He's okay with just seeing the damn joke, through his fucking camera. He thinks he's safe, invisible. But he isn't. We see him, all of us. Well, I do. Maureen and Joanne are wrapped up in their own world of Pookie and Lovemuffin or whatever like usual, Collins is gone, Mimi...might as well be gone. Every time I see her, she's slipped a little farther from that night. Convincing me I couldn't save her from herself was the last thing she ever said to me.

I don't want to think about her. I've gotten good at that recently. I only think about her when I forget not to, which is probably how she would have wanted it. That was the kind of girl she was, you know? The Old Mimi, I mean. Not who she became later.

Again, I don't want to think about her.

His big secret, the one that he's been hiding since before April...he doesn't think I know. Everyone thinks I have no idea. Poor, clueless Roger. Has no idea his best friend's been in love with him for years. What would he do if he knew? I'll fucking tell you what he'd do; exactly what I've been doing for years, nothing. They'd probably all think I'm some sort of fucking homophobe, Collins and Angel and Maureen and Joanne regardless.

At first, I'll be honest, I thought it was a phase. Then...I wasn't thinking at all, I was too busy vomiting my guts up and begging him to let me die. The most vivid memories I have of Mark from that time are a cool washcloth on my forehead—although I'm pretty sure it was just a piece from someone's old shirt. Doesn't matter up here. I knew him as a cool piece of fabric, that annoying hand on my back, the stupid soup spoon at my lips. For at least a month, that was all he was to me. That was all I was to myself.

After that, after April, I didn't want anything, anyone. Show me someone who fucking would after all of that. But I think...no, I _know_ he felt betrayed when I started seeing Mimi. Kind of a, "Why not me?" I was trying to get my life back, and I don't know anyone who's ever been alive like her. But that's not real life, that's the fucking problem. It's fake life. She only seemed so alive because of the drugs and sex and the cheating and the betra—I don't want to think about Mimi.

I can't. Not with him. I've never told him I know because then it'll be out in the open, and I'm not strong enough for that. I love him way too much to fuck it up like I fuck everything else up. April and Mimi were just the latest ones, I've been fucking relationships up since I was twelve, with Becky Sullivan. I thought I was such a big man, being a badass...her dad sent her to a fucking shrink who specialized in "troubled kids" when he saw who she was dating, just because he saw me smoking one cigarette. People I've dated have ended up in shrinks, group therapy, switching schools, and now dead. Fucking dead because of me.

So forgive me, Mark. I wish there was some way I could tell you that it isn't that I don't love you. I wish we could try it once I get my shit together, but by then it'll be too late. You know that as well as I do. Probably better, right? After all, you're the one who talks to the doctor. I'd rather not know, if it's all the same to you.

You deserve more than I could ever give you. I'll be doing this one selfless thing before I go; keeping us 'just friends.'


End file.
